There has been many different car charging connectors in use on electronic vehicles. Electric Car Charging Standards Split article tells that many car manufacturers have agreed on a single EV charging port connector standard that has been in development by the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) for several years. European car companies have been divided on standards for both AC and DC charging. The new single connector will support fast DC charging as well as be backward compatible with the J1772 AC charger that is standard on many plug-in electric vehicles today. I think that use of that standard will rise in 2012, and common charging standard will speed up the EV deployment.

Automotive electronics: What’s hot in 2012 article tells that in automotive electronics, 2012 looks to be a year of consolidation as technologies introduced previously become more widespread across model lines. In particular, voice recognition, with different features and interfaces, is seen as a way of distinguishing one brand from another, while electrified power trains in the form of hybrids and pure electric drives will be available in more models. In keep costs down driven auto industry the more mature the technology that goes into a car, the less risk of failure and costly warranty claims.

New electronics features are making challenges for developers. Automotive Electronics: Do We Really Need All This Stuff? article tells that everyone in the auto industry knows that the number of electronic control units (ECUs) in vehicles is nearing the point of unmanageability. Low-end vehicles now incorporate between 35 and 40 ECUs, while luxury cars may have 80 or more. “We’re right up against the limit right now. We need to find unique ways to integrate features and functions, and give our customers what they want without overloading our controllers.” The number of automotive features and functions keeps rising.

The synchronization of traffic signals at crossroads, with the ebb and flow of vehicle traffic seeking seamless movement, is a largely unexplored means to relieve congestion on urban roads. Traffic signals change at fixed intervals regardless of the volume of traffic and hold up drivers at intersections.

Data feeds from sensors embedded in roads, roadside cameras, parking, public transportation, foot traffic at malls, and even related variables such as historical data of special events, weather patterns, and seasonal traffic flows, can be combined to predict the flow of traffic at each intersection. Real-time data on accidents or other unexpected events like a shooting in the city further improve the quality of predictions. The estimated benefit from the smooth flow of traffic, uninterrupted at intersections, is a reduction in congestion levels by 10%.

[Matt]’s 2008 Subaru’s stereo wasn’t really cutting the mustard for him anymore. He wanted to do something, something a little more custom than just an aftermarket stereo. After giving it some thought he decided he would try to mount an Android tablet in his car’s dash to act as a media player.

The HTC Evo View tablet appeared to be a great size to fit in the space left over from the stock radio, and it did fit nicely but there was a problem, the AC vent was in the way of the headphone and USB jacks! This was only a minor inconvenience for [Matt]. Instead of butchering the AC vents he decided to disassemble the tablet and see what the other options were.

Originally, [Matt] had to turn the tablet both on and off when starting and stopping the car. He then stumbled upon a product called the IOIO. The IOIO allows an Android device to interact with the inputs and outputs;

Until now, steerable rear axles were too expensive, too complicated or too fuel-inefficient to implement. Such systems which assist the steering of the front axle for better driving behavior have been on the agenda of OEMS throughout the automotive industry — and due to their high price and complexity they were restricted to a few high-end vehicles. Now ZF says it has a system ready for volume production. ZF’s AKC system, which facilitates steering movements of the rear axle by modifying the toe angle, demonstrates its advantages as a standard active rear axle steering in Porsche’s 911 Turbo and 911 GT3 models.

The company’s developers developed a length-adjustable toe link, which lies at the center of the active system: Electromechanical actuators can vary the toe angle while the vehicle is moving; control software integrated into the vehicle electronics issues the commands.

One advantage: A steering movement is produced by modifying the track angle. This is actually small (about three degrees) compared with the front axle, but steering intervention at the rear axle has a greater impact. Interacting with the steering angle of the front wheels, the result is a distinctly noticeable and positive impact on vehicle handling.

The technology offers benefits in many driving situations, claims ZF.

Steering assistance with AKC is created by electromechanical actuators which are not mechanically connected to the steering wheel. It is therefore a pure ‘by-wire’ system. This has the advantage that AKC can be integrated into the active control network of the particular passenger car. Then it assists the functions provided by other active systems – such as in combination with ESP. If AKC and the antilock braking system are interconnected, stabilizing interventions of the brakes and rear axle improve the vehicle’s handling during deceleration. Thus the system enhances safety and driving dynamics at the same time. When braking on surfaces with varying grip, the stopping distance is reduced.

In July last year, the British government said it would review the rules of the road to see if any changes were needed for the testing of driverless cars. Well, the report is out and the tech and auto industries are free to get testing.

According to the regulatory review, there are no legal barriers to testing autonomous vehicles on the U.K.’s public roads today, as long as a driver is present and taking responsibility, and the vehicle complies with road traffic laws. Those doing the testing don’t need to get any certificates or permits.

A code of practice will be published in the spring

Legislation to allow wider deployment of the technology is being promised for mid-2017 – there are several kinks that will need ironing out, most notably around who’s liable for crashes

A major review has confirmed the UK is uniquely positioned to develop driverless car technology.

Up to now, the scope for testing driverless cars has been limited, but today (11 February 2015) industry has been given the green light for testing on public roads.

The UK’s regulatory environment now sets it apart as a premium location for developing new technology, with tremendous potential for reducing accidents and making traffic flow more smoothly.

Transport Minister Claire Perry said:

Driverless cars are the future. I want Britain to be at the forefront of this exciting new development, to embrace a technology that could transform our roads and open up a brand new route for global investment.

These are still early days but today is an important step. The trials present a fantastic opportunity for this country to take a lead internationally in the development of this new technology.

The ministers will witness the first official trials of the fully autonomous Meridian shuttle in Greenwich and unveil a prototype of a driverless pod that will be tested in public areas in Milton Keynes.

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Tomi Engdahl says:

n the last few weeks we’ve heard about a poaching war between Apple and Tesla, a couple hires by Apple from the auto industry, and a whole lot of speculation followed by reports that Apple has a team of hundreds working on an electric vehicle. But who exactly is working on the project at Apple?

We can learn a lot about the scope of the research Apple is doing from the talent on the team, so we’ve talked to our sources and compiled a list of some key employees Apple has hired and assigned to the project.

Volvo has provided details of its plan to carry out a project with 100 self-driving cars in Gothenburg’s real-world traffic. The project reveals which problems autonomous driving will be confronted with.

Starting in 2017, Volvo will test autonomous driving in a large-scale trail with commuters. The vehicles to be used are latest model XC90 SUVs crammed with sensors. But the project also makes clear that sensors and sensors and algorithms in the car are not enough – many success-critical data come from outside the car.

The set of sensors in the self-driving vehicles will be sophisticated: Besides a long-range 76GHz radar in the rear-view mirror, the vehicles will have four radars behind the front and rear bumpers, one on each corner of the car. These radar sensors will detect and locate objects in all directions. By sweeping both left and right, transmitting waves that bounce off signs, poles, and tunnels, they monitor a full 360 degrees around the car.

Four cameras monitor objects in close proximity to the vehicle.

A multiple beam laser scanner is placed in the front of the vehicle, below the air intake.

This laser sensor has a range of 150 meters for vehicles and covers a 140 degrees field of view.

In addition, a trifocal camera placed behind the upper part of the windscreen is three cameras in one, providing a broad 140 degrees view, a 45 degrees view and a long-range, yet narrow, 34 degrees view for improved depth perception and distant-object detection. The camera can spot suddenly appearing pedestrians and other unexpected road hazards.

Two long-range radars placed in the rear bumper of the car ensure a good rearward field of view.

Twelve ultrasonic sensors around the car are used to identify objects close to the vehicle and support autonomous drive at low speeds.

All together, this represents a rather sophisticated collection of on-board sensors. It will be complemented by a high definition 3D digital map to provide the vehicle with information about the surroundings, e.g. altitude, road curvature, number of lanes, geometry of tunnels, guard rails, signs, exits, etc. The position geometry is in many cases at centimeter level.

The high performance GPS is one part of the positioning control

In addition, the vehicle complements the sensor-generated information of its surroundings by utilizing V2V connectivity, and for current traffic and map data it will be connected to cloud services

“The system tests itself constantly. It has to be able to detect that its sensors cannot detect anymore. In such a case, the driver will be alerted and the automatic driving function will be disengaged”, Coelingh said. “The real challenge is to make this system work not only most of the time, but also under exceptional conditions.”

The driver is not obligated to stay alert and keep his view on the road; he can read mails, listen to music or even knit.

“The only precondition is that he is in the driver’s seat and he is sober”, Mertens said. “We do not assume that the driver can over immediately”.

New York Times:
Android Auto and CarPlay-enabled cars are coming, but some auto manufacturers are slow to adopt either platform — Rivals Google and Apple Fight for the Dashboard — MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — When Google hosted a boot camp here this month for its Android operating system, there were some new faces in the room: auto manufacturers.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — When Google hosted a boot camp here this month for its Android operating system, there were some new faces in the room: auto manufacturers.

They made the trip to learn about Android Auto, a new dashboard system meant to let a smartphone power a car’s center screen. Tasks as varied as navigation, communication and music apps, all constantly talking to the cloud. And to the driver.

A similar scene is playing out just a few miles down the road at Apple, where a rival system, CarPlay, has been developed for iPhone users.

After years of being treated as an interesting side business, autos have become the latest obsession for Silicon Valley, with Apple assigning about 200 engineers to work on electric vehicle technology and Google saying it envisions the public using driverless car s within five years.

But nowhere is that obsession playing out more immediately than in the battle to develop the next generation of cars’ dashboard systems. In the coming weeks and months, dealerships around the country will begin selling vehicles capable of running Android Auto, Apple CarPlay, or both.

The systems go far beyond currently available Bluetooth pairing for playing music or making a hands-free call, and allow for Google’s or Apple’s operating system to essentially take over the center screen and certain buttons within the car.

“Consumers have spoken,” said John Maddox, assistant director of the University of Michigan’s Mobility Transformation Center. “They expect to have coordination between their phone and their vehicle.”

Volvo Cars has started a joint project with Sweden and Norway traffic authorities. The project as much as a thousand vehicles to share information with each other through a cloud.

ITS project (Intelligence Transport System) is to get rid of surprises on the road. – The more information we can share the road, the less surprises will receive. And it is we want to avoid surprises, says the ITS project manager Erik Israelsson Volvo.

The project is implemented by means of a warning for icy road conditions. In addition, the system warns the other cars, if someone has an emergency flashers on. — this is only the beginning.

The aim is that the ITS system could become a commercial use within a few years.

Over the last thirty years of automotive electrical engineering has been a full revolution. The 1980s, the basic electrical engineering has been replaced by complex, communicating with each other on these electronic systems.

Old cars each signal was pulled own management, whether it be high beam warning light or the fuel tank sensor. Modern vehicle contains a lot of mutually communicating systems and only motor control required for the sensor the amount of data is huge. If a signal is pulled my wire, cord sets, be unduly thick.

The solution is to use bus technology: information on the vehicle data bus is moving just as the data moves in Ethernet networks. Reliability and the real-time vehicle technology are certainly higher than those intended for domestic use in telecommunications networks.

1980 vehicles, electronics was quite simple and troubleshooting rite multimeter or a simple common sense.

The tightening of emissions standards, and in particular the TWC input mandatory in the early 1990s brought the electronic fuel injection in the cheapest class cars.

Intelligent security technology

Electronics has enabled the development of intelligent safety systems for vehicles. High-speed sensor data processing makes it possible, for example, a collision all airbags are not triggered unnecessarily.

Also, stability control systems are enabled by modern information technology. Without a lightning fast sensor data processing stability would be impossible to implement effectively.

Electronics has diversified the vehicle entertainment and information systems.

Apple is serious about entering the auto market. Here’s our less-than-serious take on what the press release might look like announcing this magical vehicle.

Apple plans to enter the automotive industry. According to Bloomberg, Apple aims to start selling cars in 2020. The company is said to have hundreds of people working to develop a car, many of whom have deep automotive engineering expertise. The company also has reportedly made aggressive hiring offers to employees at Tesla Motors.

Apple is being sued by A123 Systems LLC, a battery technology company based in Waltham, Mass., because it hired five of the company’s employees. Batteries are a critical component in electric cars, and are becoming more important for general energy storage.

Son managed to fair 13 euro-priced electronics break the network using the car lock, launch it, put the windshield wipers on, play music in the car on their own cell phone and car lights flashes with the music.

The car brand has not been disclosed, but is said to belong to the ranks of the best-known.

The news is troubling car safety and the whole car industry.

Right now, the automotive industry is investing network links operating in cars, and self-driving in cars.

The boy hacked into a car as part of the competition, which tested the car safety.
Battelle-association organized the competition .

Automobiles no longer resemble the mechanical beasts they once were. In fact, they are more similar to today’s smartphone. Cars are increasingly combining the best in transportation, communications, and entertainment systems into a single platform. The once mechanical control systems like braking and steering are now electronically controlled, the infotainment systems rival that of high-end home theater systems, and the vehicles are being connected to the cloud for communications and a plethora of new functions that can both assist or even pilot the vehicle without human intervention. Entities ranging from DARPA to Google to Mercedes are rapidly pushing to remake cars of the future. The result will be vehicles that are more fuel efficient, safer, and technically advanced.

Detroit had a good year in 2014, selling 16.5 million autos — up 1 million from 2013. The stock of Ford and GM has revved on the good news, jumping 5.7 and 7.8 percent, respectively, in 2015.

With reports last week that Apple hopes to bring a car to market in five years, every motorist who remembers the pre-iPhone era of smartphones must be feeling like their new car will go the way of BlackBerry, Nokia and Palm Pilot.

Currently, at a secret location near its Cupertino, Calif., headquarters, Apple is said to be working on a car design — code-named “Project Titan” — at breakneck speed. While auto companies can take as long as seven years to develop a car, Apple is said to be hoping to start shipping its vehicles in five years — as early as 2020.

Elon Musk’s Tesla is currently the No. 1 electric car maker — with vehicles ranging from $70,000 to $100,000 — and Google is working on George Jetson-like driverless cars. But neither is close to cornering the market on mass-affordable electric cars.

My sense is this is where Apple will attack — just as it had with smartphones, laptops and tablets.

Former Ford engineer Steve Zadesky is heading up Titan.

Efforts to fast-track the car project got Apple in a little jam last week when a car-battery maker, A123 Systems, sued it over alleged poaching of its executives.

How badly does Apple CEO Tim Cook want to get this car out of the garage?

Well, Apple has been offering the best and the brightest in the car-battery field $250,000 signing bonuses plus salaries 60 percent higher than what they currently earn, Musk told Bloomberg Businessweek this month.

Detroit still welds.

Apple and Liquidmetal have filed 17 patents together — 14 in the past year or so.

It’s this kind of think-way-outside-the-box process that elevates Apple above its peers.

The Economist, for example, cites a research report predicting that the market for cars with self-driving capabilities will never exceed 25 percent of the market.

But the history of the PC revolution illustrates how wrong this way of thinking is. As PCs got cheaper and more powerful, the rest of the world didn’t stand still. Ubiquitous PCs made it possible for ordinary consumers to get on the internet. A wide variety of industries — music, newspapers, books, retail stores, maps, cameras — got re-built around digital devices. New services like social media and streaming video were invented that made PCs and smartphones even more useful.

The same point applies to self-driving cars. Cars in 2035 could look as different from cars today as today’s iPhone looks from a PC circa 1995. A number of industries — trucking, restaurants, retail stores, delivery services, public transit, real estate — will adapt to the new capabilities of self-driving vehicles, making those vehicles increasingly central to the economy. And people will develop totally new services using self-driving vehicles that are hard to imagine today.

Self-driving cars are likely to be rented, not owned

Probably the biggest difference between today’s car market and the self-driving market of the future is that the dominant business model is likely to be Uber-style ride-sharing, not personal car ownership. Right now, most cars are sold to individual families because the need for human drivers makes it too labor-intensive to share vehicles between multiple families. But once drivers become unnecessary, it will seem (and be) wasteful for individuals to own cars that sit idle 90 percent of the time.

The biggest change, though, may be the rise of vehicles designed for zero people. For example, right now if you order a pizza, it’s usually delivered by a human driver in a full-sized car — that’s thousands of pounds of steel and glass to deliver a pizza that weighs a few pounds. But once you eliminate the need for a human driver, there’s no reason for delivery vehicles to be so big, heavy, and expensive.

Navigating this kind of change will be difficult for conventional car companies, which are organized around the assumption that a car must cost tens of thousands of dollars and have room for several human passengers. Gadget makers like Apple, which are used to operating on a smaller scale and squeezing out every ounce of unnecessary weight and cost, might have an edge.

Self-driving won’t just be a luxury feature

The Economist quotes a Boston Consulting group study predicting that self-driving cars will account for just 10 percent of the market in 2035, and that demand for automated driving capabilities in general will top out at 25 percent.

Obviously, it’s hard to know when fully self-driving cars will first reach the market — technological and regulatory obstacles could delay its introduction beyond the 10 years Boston Consulting is assuming. But once the technology enters the market, it’s likely to reach a lot more than 10 percent of the market in its first decade.

Self-driving cars will reshape other industries

For example, self-driving vehicles will pose a huge competitive threat to package delivery services like UPS and FedEx and catalog and online retailers that rely on them.

Existing car companies will struggle to compete

The Economist warns that Apple will need to “catch up with the established carmakers, which are also busy hiring software talent and which have been introducing ever more sophisticated ‘assisted driving’ features in their models, such as the ability to park themselves, and to navigate stop-go traffic unaided.” But thriving in a software-heavy industry — which is what cars will increasingly become — requires more than just hiring a bunch of programmers.

The experience of legacy media organizations is instructive. Over the last two decades, record labels, newspapers, Hollywood, and other traditional content producers have poured millions of dollars into trying to build internet-based platforms for their content. Yet the market is increasingly dominated by outsiders — YouTube, Netflix, and Amazon Prime for video, iTunes and Pandora for music, startups like Buzzfeed and the Huffington Post for news, and so forth.

Building great software requires a certain kind of culture that Silicon Valley startups have and most other types of companies do not.

today’s cars are cobbled together from components supplied by dozens of contractors

Car companies will need to rethink how they manage their supply chains if they want to avoid producing cars with huge security flaws.

Google researchers have created an algorithm that has a human-like ability to learn, marking a significant breakthrough in the field of artificial intelligence. In a paper published in Nature this week, the researchers demonstrated that the algorithm could master many Atari video games better than humans, simply through playing the game and learning from experience.

“We can go all the way from pixels to actions as we call it and actually it can work on a challenging task that even humans find difficult,” said Demis Hassabis, one of the authors of the paper. “We know now we’re on the first rung of the ladder and it’s a baby step, but I think it’s an important one.”

The researchers only provided the general-purpose algorithm its score on each game, and the visual feed of the game, leaving it to then figure out how to win. It dominated Video Pinball, Boxing and Breakout, but struggled with Montezuma’s Revenge and Asteroids.

The algorithm is designed to tackle any sequential decision-making problem.

Apple CEO Tim Cook told the Telegraph in an interview that he wants to Apple’s smart watch opening car doors. Comment more grist to the mill to rumors that Apple is interested in developing an electric car.

Freescale Semiconductor has unveiled at the Mobile World Congress here an automotive vision system-on-chip, dubbed S32V, designed for what the company calls “an accident-free car.”

The new SoC, in addition to advanced vision algorithms and sensor data-fusion capabilities, provides protection against potential external wireless attacks, a much needed feature in the era of “Connected Cars.”

The difference Freescale claims is that the new S32V SoC will turn such “nice-to-have” driver assistance features into “more sophisticated co-pilot, safety-critical functions,” explained Matt Johnson, vice president & general manager, automotive microcontrollers at Freescale.
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In short, the S32V is designed to make safety-critical decisions for drivers so that cars won’t get into accidents, he added.

Psychologically speaking, it might take time for drivers to completely trust cars to take control. But Freescale, in the automotive market for decades, is confident that microprocessors rigorously designed from top to bottom with automotive-grade safety in mind, can provide ECUs that keep cars out of accidents. “We think we can intersect a market that’s transitioning from today’s cars with driver assist features to autonomous cars of the future,”

Inside the automotive vision SoC is CogniVue’s second-generation APEX Image Cognition Processing technology. The SoC additionally supports the fusion of vision data captured by the S32V device. Fused into the SoC are multiple other data streams, including radar, LiDAR and ultrasonic information to enable optimal resolution and image recognition accuracy, the company said.

BMW has introduced the background system, the purpose of which is to facilitate the applications and services, bringing the car manufacturer’s ConnectedDrive platform.

Background The system has built the IT and consulting house Accenture. In the future, new BMW owners can buy applications directly to BMW’s own app store.

Accenture, it is a scalable platform that is flexible for future needs.

“Electronic services are sold by the car manufacturers are able to create even deeper relationships with their customers,” says Accenture’s car business, Vice President Roland Mayr.

At the same time, however, cars in intelligence and Internet connections have attracted criticism. Recently, BMW’s ConnectedDrive system found security flaws, which make cars was possible, inter alia, to break into

BMW’s Drive System is available in 36 countries. The store has so far been introduced in Germany, Belgium and Luxembourg.